Monday, November 26, 2012

White Pawn to Red Queen: I’m Watching You

As happens time and time again: you wake up one day and it’s Spring!

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The next thing you know, summer is in full swing:

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and suddenly it’s Autumn.

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Then in the wink of an eye we find ourselves back in the grip of another cold, barren Winter.

clash-protesters-demonstrating morsi powergrabEgyptian tanks confront protestors in Cairo demonstrating against Morsi’s power grab

“The Arab Spring in Egypt looks a whole lot like the Hosni Mubarak tin-pot dictatorship, minus the secularism, good relationship with Israel and reliable partnership with the West. In other words, Egypt now may have Mubarak-style oppression plus Islamist rule. (snip)

The explanation is self-evident: This is not secularized democracy protective of the rule of law and individual rights but Islamist authoritarianism.”

Boy, who could’ve seen that coming? It’s almost as if our good intentions and the power of Big Guy’s personality alone aren’t enough.

It’s like Gerard’s Sidelines post yesterday:

The Red Queen's race

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"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little,

"you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."


"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen.

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" --

EinsteinThis seems to be related to another wise man’s definition of insanity; doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

There may be a lesson in here somewhere.

“The problem is that we nominate too many Republicans -- no matter how nice, decent and good they may be -- for whom conservatism is a second language.

And then they lose.”

Maybe we should just slow down a little. You, know, like the slow food movement; get back to basics. Instead of fomenting another Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the Mideast we could just focus on some “local” issues for a change. Like our fiscal cliff. And unemployment. And an economy that’s still shrinking and sinking. And the impending Obamacare doctor shortage. And inflation in the face of weaker growth (sometimes nostalgically called “stagflation”).

Although, now that we live in Wonderland where you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in place, that “slow movement” probably won’t work. And yet, as my late comment on Saturday’s thread noted, it is one of life’s incontrovertible facts that the hurrier you go, the behinder you get. So it appears we are caught on the horns of the Red Queen’s dilemma.

Although the Republicans are even worse off; they seem not only caught, butt impaled:

us_redblue-vichyh/t Sondrakistan

“Let's review the fundamental principles again. One cannot plunge the country into astronomical debt without there being a financial come-to-Jesus reckoning. One cannot tempt aggression with weakness. One cannot tax one's way to prosperity. One cannot build a behemoth federal government and expect the country to prosper. One cannot, as Mark Levin puts it, not understand the "interconnection of liberty, free markets, religion, tradition and authority" -- and not pay a price for that lack of understanding.

Were these conservative principles true in 1980? Yes. They were also true in 1780 and 1880 and they will be true in 2080. They are to the world of politics and government what Newton's law of gravity is to the physical world. And to the extent that they are ignored, one is -- politically speaking -- jumping off the Empire State Building without a parachute.”

If returning to fundamentals doesn’t work, they might try applying Alice’s strategy as laid out in the table of contents of Through the Looking Glass.

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It worked for Alice – she advanced from pawn to White Queen and ultimately captured the Red Queen; maybe it would work for Republicans too.

On the other hand, if they’ve grown comfortable being pawns, none of their next 11 moves will capture the Queen.

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I would certainly think, however, they would want to capitalize on having their own two-way looking glass.

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Perhaps I should have Little Mo get in touch with them.

Linked By: Andrea Shea-King on facebook, and HostileLogic on The Telegraph, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and NOBO2012 on Free Republic, Thanks!